Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Jubeat is a tapping game on the iphone and ipad. There are 16 keys to press when the flower/box/etc comes out with the beat of the music. A japan store account is required to download the game from the app store. There would be only 3 songs free at first but you can get all the songs free if you jailbreak.

We like to play this game as it is fun and it requires fast reaction time. Lim Jeck is the best among the 3 of us at this game.

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

The One-Minute Physics series were created Henry Reich, 25, who explains concepts of physics with the help of his black Crayola marker. By using time-lapsed drawing, he makes complex scientific topics interesting. I like this series a lot - great doodle animation which makes learning fun and more importantly, it is fast-paced (all clips last less than 2 minutes).

The Khan Academy is created in 2006 by American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT. The website has a free online collection of more than 3000 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, microeconomics and computer science. Though the website offers a wealth of information with wide-ranging topics, personally I find most of the video clips rather long and draggy. Well, one man's meat is another man's poison. I heard Abhi (Lim Li's classmate at NUS High) enjoys watching the videos, esp. those on astronomy, physics and math.

The RSA Animate series of video clips present some very sophisticated ideas to viewers. The visual nature of the lectures helps comprehension and helps hold student interest, and aims to air exciting ideas from respected speakers on subjects from climate change to the credit crunch. I think this lecture series is really cool but it may be more suitable for mature learners e.g. JC and above students and adults.

Last but not least, our very own Singapore’s Open Lectures. A community of Junior College (JC) students past and present have banded together to offer free online lectures. The website carries video clips on topics in JC economics and chemistry. Lectures in physics, biology, mathematics and geography will be available later.

Thursday, 8 March 2012

Yesterday was the IOI Workshop 2012 Day 08 and mini-contest 06. Thanks to problem c, which is essentially a mathematical problem, Lim Jeck scored the highest (0.83%) in yesterday's contest. In fact, he was the only one out of 40 students who managed to solve problem c (constitutes 0.5%). He also solved problem b (0.33%) but had no time to solve problem a (0.17%).

Click here for more details about the workshop, and the complete current ranking.

This is the first time that NUS High has taken 3 positions in the top 4! But note that the current ranking is only based on 6% of the overall score to qualify for IOI 2012. Personally, I hope that at the end, at least one each from RI, HCI and NUSH makes it into the top 4 to represent Singapore for the International Olympiad in Informatics 2012, in Italy. The 4th representative can be from any of these 3 schools. I also hope Gan Wei Liang from HCI makes it to the IOI 2012 team as last year he missed the 4th position by a mere 0.7%.

Dr Steven Halim (IOI workshop instructor) said that he wanted to see if this year he managed to have a female student (Lim Min?) surviving until Week 13 as no female student had managed to do so in the past 3 years - usually they drop/disappear by mid semester. Ha ha, I think he might be disappointed again. Lim Min told me that she might drop out anytime soon, as the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI 2012) is already over (held last Saturday) and she does not see any point in continuing, since she thinks that she is unlikely to make it into top 4. As this is Lim Min's JC2 year, she feels that she should be concentrating on her GCE 'A' levels instead of spending much time on Math Olympiad or Informatics Olympiad.